Insubordinate employees — sack or forgive them?

Thursday 24 June 2010 11:46 BST

Dumped: General Stanley McChrystal has paid the price for criticising his boss

When to sack or when to ignore? That was the dilemma facing two leaders this week. One was President Obama over his Afghan army commander, General Stanley McChrystal. The other was Fabio Capello and his England team member, John Terry.

After reading the general's critical comments about himself and his civilian staff, Obama pulled the trigger. Capello watched the footage of Terry's press conference in which he attacked the manager's approach and let him stay. Yesterday, Terry turned out for England and played well, saving what might have been a goal that would have sent the side out of the World Cup.

It's a problem that confronts all bosses at times: the insubordinate employee. But there is a fundamental difference in the way we and the Americans, especially, tackle it.

Consider the working day of General Sir Richard Dannatt, going about his duties as Constable of the Tower of London. Effectively the manager of the place, he's required to attend ceremonial and social events at the Tower and chair bi-annual meetings of two charitable trusts. And he must be present when a member of the royal family or a Cabinet minister visits.

When he was made the 159th Constable last year, Dannatt said: "I am delighted to be appointed as the next constable of Her Majesty's Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London, following in the footsteps of some particularly illustrious forebears. It is a considerable honour." Nevertheless, within the military it's regarded as a sinecure, a non-job for the former chief of the general staff, the most senior member of the Army, still aged only 60.

Other soldiers with careers as distinguished as Dannatt's have gone on to run other government organisations and receive peerages. Not Dannatt. He was supposed to be becoming a defence adviser to David Cameron but that hasn't occurred either. Why? The suspicion has to be that he is paying the price for speaking out against his political masters about the war in Iraq. In a newspaper interview in 2006, the general said: "I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq, but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them."

Dannatt talked about the lack of preparation for the post-successful invasion, saying it was "poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning". His comments produced a Downing Street rebuttal that Britain had a "clear strategy" and worked with international partners "in support of the democratically elected government of Iraq, under a clear United Nations mandate".

But not for Dannatt the summons to see the boss and public execution, as happened to McChrystal. While the US general's comments were more personal and direct than those of his UK counterpart, their meaning and effect was exactly the same. But McChrystal went immediately and Dannatt ostensibly remained.

Unlike our Prime Minister, the US President is commander-in-chief of his country's armed forces. Obama really is McChrystal's boss in a direct chain of command. Here, the relationship between the military and political leadership is less clearly defined.

While American army officers like to think of themselves as separate (and superior) to Washington, the grandest military title and most impressive uniform does not belong to a serving soldier but to an elected politician. That is not the case here, so the distinction between the military and politics remains somewhat blurred.

More important, in the UK we tend not to go in for ritual sackings. Our punishments are far more discreet — hence Dannatt's confinement to the Tower and denial of a peerage.

This week, while McChrystal was humiliated, the former England football captain, John Terry, spoke out at the World Cup in South Africa and made plain his views and those of some of his colleagues regarding the style of the boss, Capello. Was Terry fired? No. Did the overlords of the English game, the Football Association, demand he be sent home? Not at all.

In many countries, if a member of a national team had spoken out in such a fashion, that would have been it — they would have been publicly dropped, never to play for the side again. Instead, Terry appeared yesterday, against Slovenia. Meanwhile, you have to suspect that some peculiarly eccentric British penalty is being saved up for him — that his crime won't be forgotten, that he will have to wait longer for an honour or not be invited to the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards.

Another leader who was allowed to remain was Tony Hayward, who criticised BP's management at an internal management meeting in December 2006 in the wake of a blast at the firm's Texas City refinery, which killed 15 people and injured more than 170 others. Hayward said: "We have a leadership style that is too directive and doesn't listen sufficiently well. The top of the organisation doesn't listen sufficiently to what the bottom is saying."

There was shock, but Hayward was allowed to go on and replace Lord Browne as BP Chief Executive. With hindsight, given the crisis facing BP today under his stewardship after the Gulf of Mexico spillage, perhaps he should have gone.

When Alistair Darling, the then Chancellor, dared to say we were facing the worst downturn for 60 years, he wasn't dismissed. Rather, as he puts it, the "forces of hell" were unleashed upon him as Downing Street sought to undermine and ridicule him.

It's our way. The US shoots its traitors; we engage in something more subtle. Just look at Dannatt. No one dressed him down or fired him. But his humiliation looking after the ravens is as complete, in its very British fashion, as that suffered by the square-jawed McChrystal.